Notes from our travels across a mysterious world.

Visitors from European nations traveling with visas or visa-free to the United States will soon have to give 10 digital fingerprints when entering the country, a senior U.S. Homeland Security official said Monday.

Let’s see, the last time I had my fingerprints taken by a digital scanner owned by the U.S. government, it took 30 minutes and continual rewetting of my fingertips because the system was having trouble matching the individual prints to a ten-print scan. Since that was in April, and the machine was fairly new and expensive, I doubt the technology used in the various points of entry has any reason to work much more consistently. I wonder how they plan on handling the extra delays?

Maybe we can work this into some kind of marketing slogan: “Europeans are lining up to get into the United States!”